Abby Lawlor is a second-year JD candidate at Berkeley Law and a graduate student researcher at the UC Berkeley Labor Center. Prior to law school, Abby worked as a strategic researcher for UNITE HERE Local 8 in Seattle. She is Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Berkeley Journal of Employment & Labor Law and a proud member of UAW 2865 and SRU-UAW.
Drawing insights from recent hard-won union negotiation campaigns, Jane McAlevey and Abby Lawlor look to the workers leading some of the toughest fights today to provide a masterclass in participatory social change.
A report by Jane McAlevey and Abby Lawlor, illustrates best practices for building the power to win in today’s challenging union climate and features a series of case studies in collective bargaining during the four years under Trump. They cover four key employment sectors: teachers, nurses, hotel workers, and journalists. In each case, workers used high transparency and high participation approaches in contract campaigns to build worker power. Each victory points a path to raising workers’ expectations of what is possible to win at the negotiations table today.
A new report from Berkeley is a rare piece of good news for American labor—and a bracing reminder of what real organizing looks like.
